Art Frame: Splendore a Venezia Exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Monday, October 14, 2013

Splendore a Venezia Exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Splendore a Venezia:
Art and Music from the Renaissance to Baroque in the Serenissima

October 12, 2013 to January 19, 2014

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is hosting a new temporary exhibition on Venice art and music, ranging from the early sixteenth century to the fall of the Serenissima at the close of the eighteenth century. La Serenissima was the name for the Republic of Venice, from the title Serenissimo, literally meaning 'the most/very serene'.

This is an interdisciplinary and also an innovative exhibition. It aims to explore the important interrelationships that existed between the visual arts and music in the Venetian Republic, and how they served the political ambitions of the state and its civic institutions, becoming increasingly central to the economy of the Republic.

The exhibition brings together approximately 120 paintings, prints, and drawings, as well as historical instruments, musical manuscripts, and texts. On display are masterworks by many renowned artists associated with the musical life of Venice, such as Titian, Tintoretto, Bassano, Giovanni Battista, Domenico Tiepolo, and Francesco Guardi, many of whom were also amateur musicians. There are also works by Bernardo Strozzi, Pietro Longhi and Canaletto whose paintings show the role of music in the the Venetian everyday life.

This exhibition also includes manuscripts and publications by Venetian composers like the Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Albinoni, Lotti and Vivaldi and a number of Venecian musical instruments. The exhibition's halls are organized around various time periods, and also thematically. Each hall portrays a specific musical style which can be heard by the visitors as a background theme. In addition, the exhibition's free audio guide consists only of musical excerpts that connect by numbers to some works on display.

The works on loan for this exhibition, including precious historical instruments, have been contributed by 61 international collections in Canada and abroad:

From the United States – the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library & Museum, the New York Public Library, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington).
From Italy – the Palatine Gallery, Uffizi, Capitoline, Cini Foundation, Accademia (Venice), Museo Correr.
Rrom the rest of Europe – Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, Madrid’s Thyssen‐Bornemisza, London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery and National Gallery, and the Louvre. From the beginning, the Cité de la musique in Paris has contributed to this exhibition with its scientific expertise and by loaning major instruments.